


Unveiled

by Frazi



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Adult MC, Adult Themes, Dark, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Humor, Mild Language, Return to RAD, Romance, sexy demon boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24568462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frazi/pseuds/Frazi
Summary: A whole year of my life spent in a dream that spit me out and into reality in one fell swoop. And nobody ever came for me.
Relationships: Main Character & Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Main Character/Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!) & Reader, Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Character(s), Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader
Comments: 86
Kudos: 205





	1. Glutton for Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> The idea wouldn't leave me. The sometimes tooth-rotting saccharine sweetness of the game prompts me to see past the facade to see the darkness underneath. That's what this story is about. 
> 
> I usually write stories completely before posting them. This one I hope to write with my readers so keep the comments and suggestions coming :) It's going to be a bigger project than my usual 'Obey Me' stories. Let me know if it's worth continuing!

It was time to go through with it and my knees were like jelly. There were like a hundred million reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this, but damn my sense of righteous indignation. I should have told the imperious ass to take his opportunity and take it to heaven. Because damn it all! He was the King of all hell and Diavolo doesn’t take no for an answer.

I had been eighteen and an idiot! A whole year of my life spent in a dream that spit me out and into reality in one fell swoop. I should have been grateful, but my besotted little pathetic self, had walked through that portal weeping and heartbroken. And nobody ever came for me.

I should have been angry.

But then how stupid was I, to now be subjecting myself to the same misery? Opening old wounds and salting them with sadistic pleasure. Maybe they had rubbed off on me.

Glutton for punishment indeed.

“We have a room made out for you at the Academy.”

I looked up sharply to the demon with deadpan severity. “Really Barbatos? That’s how you’re going to play this?”

The usually calm demon bristled and the flamboyantly red-clad demon, now crowned king, sighed. “Must you be so combative?”

“How ungrateful of me because it’s not like you twisted my arm or anything. Oh wait.” My grin was vile and Diavolo had the decency to wince.

“I did ask nicely.”

“And then you threatened my vice chancellor to release me.”

The King of hell came out of his chair, walking around the ostentatiously huge desk. He wasn’t the least bit bothered by my accusation. It was in his nature. “Oh come on! You’re the finest Professor on Demonology! Our realms are doing so well working together! You specialized in us! It is only fair you come back to return the favor!”

“The favor!?” I scoffed, uncaring that this being could squash me like a cockroach. “My specialization does NOT qualify me to teach Humonology! And you are more than welcome to make your demon-human super highway on someone else’s expense, thank you very much!”

“But it would be perfect! You’re a professor now. You’d teach our students everything we are not!” He grinned manically as if that twisted line of thinking was completely logical. “Humanology!”

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Backwards. Then forwards. Then backwards again. They might have spit me out and forgotten about me, but those old bonds still seethed and invoked unholy emotions even now. The marks may have disappeared but the wounds of their removal lingered like ephemeral limbs long lost.

When I was a little less homicidal, I opened my eyes and met his teasing gaze. “Look, I am here under great persuasion and partly to save my job at the university. So I will teach your stupid semester then you will lose my number forever. Capeche?”

“Excuse me?” Barbatos started.

Diavolo blinked and raised an eyebrow as if my words were alien. “How could anyone not come back to my place?”

“Truth your kingness? You kidnapped me in my sleep the first time!”

“But you loved it here!”

“And now I want nothing to do with the lot of you! Go figure!”

“Watch your mouth, human!” Barbatos growled low.

Diavolo however frowned at him then at me, clearly confused. “But we’re so lovable.”

And there in lay my problem. They were. One in particular. “Find me accommodation off campus. Then portal me in for class and then portal me out when I’m done. Those are my terms. I don’t associate with anyone. I don’t fraternize. I don’t care what you think.”

Diavolo opened his mouth then closed it with a huff. “Odd. You were sweeter and more agreeable as a teenager. What have you been doing to become this ornery and jaded?”

“I was kidnapped for a year. Thanks for that. And now I’m blackmailed for another four months! Imagine how I’ll be the next time you see me.” He grinned widely and I glared. “No, Lord of all Hell. There won’t be a next time! I’m being sarcastic!”

Rolling his eyes he dropped back into his chair. “That’s all you’re doing now I see.”

“Right. So I’ll be going now. Hows about a door Barbatos? A nice clean, hidden apartment as far away from the Academy as possible, if you please.”

There was a flicker of sadness in Diavolo’s lightning eyes. “They do miss you.”

A fire raged within me. It was fury and regret and I wanted to kick him for making that face! How dare he use them against me! “Tough cookies,” I spat and grit my teeth. “Let’s go. My fraternizing quota for the day is done. I’ll see you for class tomorrow.”

“Storm…”

“Now.” Gritting my teeth, I glared at him, a strange hum to my frame as I realized I was on the edge of my sanity. “Please.”

Perhaps he saw it too. A nod was all Barbatos needed from his master before he gestured to a door on the far side of the office. “This way.”

“The fewer windows, the better please.”

“I have just the place,” Barbatos smiled gently and it sent ants crawling over my skin.

Again, the phantom flesh burned where the sigils used to be and I grit my teeth. One master to rule them all my ass.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	2. Those Childish Delusions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year I’d spent at RAD was a rose-colored window that now stood shattered.

I’d always known children remembered things differently. They never see the darkness that plagues our world until it creeps up their driveway and into their homes.

Barbatos took me on a walk.

I should have insisted he find me another door, but I got no time to protest.

The reality of the illusion had rendered me speechless.

Feet drifting automatically beside the slippery demon, I let him lead me out of devildom. Or what I had thought was devildom. The moment we stepped off the bridge across the river everything changed. It was then that I realized this is how graduates must feel. They live a part of their lives on campus and then are slapped down into the real world.

I was slapped down all the way to hell.

The streets were not clean and dark and lit by lamps. They were dark and filthy and littered with slithering shadows I dared not linger on. The sky was coloring into hues of red from the inky blackness I’d seen on countless days at the Academy. This was hell. The year I’d spent at RAD was a rose-colored window that now stood shattered around my older, jaded self.

They had kept this darkness at bay. They hadn’t let it creep up into our driveway and I felt betrayed. Lied to. The world I’d remembered was nothing like this world that Barbatos now showed me. The screams were constant in some parts of the streets. Some of them so very human and young that they dragged something weak and afraid inside me.

I thought I’d survived hell, albeit with a dented heart, but this! This was hell itself.

“The place it just around the corner.”

Of this!? I wanted to scream. But it was what I requested and Barbatos had cunningly offered the very reality that now surrounded me.

I’d been living in a cocoon of protective ignorance while I had been here. Those beautiful demons had kept all these monsters and atrocities at bay. There was something poking me from the inside. Something that wanted me to dwell further on just how much they had done to make that year comfortable for me, but I was too shaken to articulate a solitary epiphany. And I couldn’t deny that Diavolo certainly had his work cut out for him. No amount of exchange programs could change the horror.

“Stop,” I whispered with none of my usual bluster or sarcasm. My plea was tinged with foul-tasting fear and panic.

“They will not find you here.”

No one would find me here. My breath hitched as I wrapped my arms around myself, rubbing feeling back into my skin. The heat of this place was cold. It crept into my bones and began to burn from the inside. “You’ve made your point.”

“What point would that be?”

A shadow of something large and heavy slid over me and I stepped closer to Barbatos suddenly keening inside for those familiar arms that shielded me for every nasty I ever encountered here. “That I was horrible and ungrateful to Diavolo and you’re an asshole for bring me here! There is NO apartment here and you’ve made your damned point!” I caught the edge of his jacket as something landed behind me with a great shake of the ground beneath us. “Please take me back.” I dared now turn around as a sound that would never be able to classify as real ripped through the night.

“And the brothers?”

Wrapping my arms around his bicep, I shuddered as a warm waft of foul and scalding breath wrapped around me. “Screw the brothers, take me home!”

It took a few breathless moments for him to walk across the street with me attached to him like a weeping baby. But there were no tears as he walked us through a door and back into Diavolo’s office.

The moment the oppressive heat was breathed out of my lungs, I gasped and fell to my knees. There had been a weight on me since the moment we’d taken a step away from the Academy grounds. It had been squeezing my heart in a way I hadn’t realize until I felt the freedom of Diavolo’s protection. I felt more than heard him squat down before me, a hand touching my shoulder until slowly and steadily the frantic gasp of panic ebbed.

Hands clawing on the expensive marble of his office, I finally sat back on my hunches and met his eyes, my own streaked red with unshed tears. “How could you…I’m so…”

The Demon king sighed and looked up at his subordinate. “Was that really necessary?”

“She wants to play big girl games, I figured it’s best to go like a Band-Aid.”

Laughter build in my chest, mad and unrestrained. “He’s a jerk and I’m sorry!”

Diavolo looked uncomfortable for a moment then sighed and rose to his feet. Holding out a hand for me, he helped me to my feet and for a moment I stood there, awkward and apologetic. Eventually it was Diavolo who smacked me on my back and laughed heartily, ever the king. “Tell you what. You can stay with me.”

“Lord Diavolo…”

“Enough Barbatos.” Those flickering gold eyes cut off his butler’s protest. “It is decided.”

Hand still on my aching heart, I took a deep breath. I thought I was prepared to suffer through this for four months. That I could be in and out without it changing me. But change was inevitable. I just hoped I could survive it this time around.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. First Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of all the demons to run into...

My first class was antsy and fretful. I could barely concentrate on the curriculum. The students exchanged glances every time the classroom door opened and I jumped. But I was a human in a room full of demon students, they expected me to be weird. By the time I had calmed my heart to normal rhythms and my palms had stopped sweating, the class was already shuffling out. With exhaustion singing across my nerves, I fell into the chair behind the teacher’s desk and put my head in my hands.

A poisoned apple shuffled across the edge of my desk and I looked up a startled to see a pretty demon girl giving me a wide toothed grin before skipping away. I looked down at the candied apple and images of beautiful black wings fluttered across my mind.

Dammit.

Shoving the treat into the trash, I willed my heart and mind back to the happy place with the daisies and the big old tree. Techniques my therapist had taught me to ground myself. With a deep breath I let it slide that one of the students had probably thought I was an idiot and meant to poison me.

I glanced at my watch and realized I’d been sitting there for a good ten minutes. Dread pooled in my belly. What if Barbatos didn’t come? The heinous bastard could deliberately make me face the world outside my classroom; my proverbial demons too. Literal ones be damned. Could he be this hateful because I’d been rude to Diavolo?

Fwick!

Head snapping around, I saw a doorway appear in the wall beside the screen and outstepped the demon in question.

“You’re late.”

“Lucky I came at all.”

I was right. Glaring at him, I gathered my things quickly. “Diavolo needs to train you better.”

“You will call him My Lord or I will leave you here.”

Gritting my teeth, I reined in the need to attack him like a rabid dog. Thank you Satan, I grumbled inwardly. “Fine. Can we please go now before anyone finds us?”

He grinned. “You realize it’s just a matter of time.”

“Leave me my delusions, you party pooper!” I stood before the door and tapped a foot, books and bag hugged to my chest. “Come on!”

Walking back slowly he was about to tease me more when the voice came from the classroom door and the handle turned. “Barbatos, is that you?”

That voice! Oh god, I knew that voice! It would haunt me in waking and dreams. Of all the demons! No! Why him!

Eyes widening in panic I stared at Barbatos in horror. “Invisible. Makemequick!” I hissed.

The demon swung his head around as a shock of white began to emerge from the opening doorway.

Unimaginable panic choking me I tugged his sleve spasmodically. “PleasepleasepleaseplehACK!” My begging whispers died into a hitch of my breath as Barbatos grabbed my wrist and a sliver of lightning slid across my skin.

Books crashing to the floor, I plastered myself against the wall just as Mammon opened the rest of the door and stepped into the classroom. “Barbatos?”

The demon butler sighed and bent down to retrieve my books. “How can I help you Avatar of Greed?”

“I thought I heard ya in here.”

My heart gave a lurch as Mammon walked through the aisle of chairs and came to stand not two feet away from me.

My world turned inside out.

Now that Barbatos’ power had effectively removed me from the situation, I should have just waited. Patiently and silently. However, I was in no way prepared. Somewhere deen in my soul, I knew I never would be. And no amount of therapy could have prepared me for the sudden flare of old awareness and need as it came crashing right back. That’s all it took. One look at him. Those Persian blue eyes offset by a sunrise. The straight, sharp edges of his bones. The beautiful sun-warmed heat of his skin. And just like that, the years of pain melded into the shock of seeing him again.

But I had no idea how to feel about the way he looked.

The years had changed me. Mammon? He was a vision right out of my past. Eternal, absolute and untouched by time. The same jacket, the same boots, the same glasses. The realization, that he was exactly the way I left him while I had aged in the last ten years, was heartbreaking. Like I had never really been here at all.

Even with my entire being flattened into the wall, I was afraid he would touch me. Too far away. Too close. Like slow crawling fury, it set a strange quake somewhere deep in my bones. Old familiar electricity seemed to bounce off of him and into my skin. It added heat to my already raw nerves and everything began to melt. It was real fear that gripped me now, because he was so close.

I realized then why I was afraid. Not that he could reach out a hand and find me.

I was afraid I couldn’t help touch him. All I had to do was reach…

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Observing the human’s first class, as per Lord Diavolo’s instruction.”

Mammon raked his gaze around the room and for a breath-stealing minute it was almost like he looked right at me. Into my eyes. With my heart hammering in my chest, I was afraid he could hear my breath, my panic, even the blood in my veins!

But he couldn’t. Barbatos was nothing if not thorough.

“Haven’t seen ya around lately.”

“I don’t like to leave Lord Diavolo’s side. But he requested.”

“So where is your new social experiment?” Mammon stuffed his hands into his designer jeans but I couldn’t help notice his eyes were still going around the room. Something lodged in my throat, a familiar emotion and I swallowed it down forcefully. Could he feel it? My presence? Perhaps…

“The Professor has left. I merely returned for their forgotten books.”

“I can still smell them.”

My breath stilled in my lungs. I dared not breathe.

“They were here for the whole class. My apologies. You have to suffer it a while longer.”

“Huh? Oh yeah. Uh…it’s disgusting. Can’t stand the stink `o human.”

The force of his words slammed into me with enough force that I had to bite my tongue from expelling my breath.

“I know you don’t like anything to remind you of_”

Mammon’s gaze turned to Barbatos sharply and glinted. Whatever he conveyed in that silent glance, Barbatos’ words came to a screeching halt.

I tasted blood.

It was perhaps a split second but Barbatos took a step away and cleared his throat. “Ahem. I’ll have it fixed.”

Mammon slid his gaze back towards the wall, but those Persian blue eyes slid through me and seemed to be seeing into a memory. Then with a scowl he turned to Barbatos. “Whatever. The Great Mammon has things to do. Just wanted to say ‘Hi’. My regards to the lord and master.” There was a hint of sarcasm in that tone and as Barbatos bristled I had to bite back a crazed laugh.

But the truth was harsher than any reality. Mammon hated me; everything that reminded me of him and I never wanted to be visible again.

*

“I don’t like lying to Lucifer.”

It was a small miracle Barbatos hadn’t published books about my cowardice back in the classroom. So at dinner, on that lavishly long table, I sat beside Diavolo silently. When he spoke, my fork paused at my mouth and I looked up at him. He didn’t bother reading the clear warning in my eyes.

Diavolo just looked like a grumpy, spoilt boy. “It’s unnatural for me.”

“Can I trust you to restrain yourself my lord?”

The Lord merely gave me a deadpan glare. “Do not call me that. I don’t like the tone.”

I couldn’t help the tremulous smile which I did my best to smother. “Barbatos laid down the law.”

“It’s more unnatural than keeping secrets from Lucifer,” Diavolo grumbled. “Just call me Diavolo already.”

“Okay Diavolo already, can you kindly keep you kingly trap shut until after I leave?”

“Storm!” Barbatos would have climbed over the table had Diavolo not held up his hand. Damn but my mouth seemed to get away from me. As always. I quickly stuffed my face with food instead of the foot I constantly seemed to be putting in there.

“You owe me at least this much,” I muttered, still munching. Damn Beelz’ influence. The one thing I couldn’t seem to deny myself was food. Depression, anxiety, stress, delusions of grandeur, nothing deterred my appetite. No one understood the toll those pacts had made on me. But the ability to eat had kept me healthy through my years of therapy. One small consolation my shrink had been happy with. Little did she know where it came from.

Putting his temple against his propped up fist, the King of all Hell smiled. “Greed is your god.”

I choked so hard on my chicken wing, Barbatos had to come and smack me one on the back before I dragged in much needed air. Leigh Bardugo’s, Six of Crows has been my birthday present to Diavolo. I knew the next line would be ‘Greed bows to me.’ Barbatos had indeed snitched. I wanted to throttle him. I however kept the homicidal need in check and cleared my throat. “Do shut up my lord.”

Barbatos put his face in his hands and Diavolo burst out laughing.

Feeling bare, vulnerable and embarrassed, I cursed the very Mammon-like flush that suffused over every inch of exposed skin. “Sorry. Old habits. I’m gona…go,” I mumbled like the recluse Levi could be and I quickly slunk out of the dining room.

But I took the plate with me. Damn you Beelz! Being back was undoing years of therapy!

*

Back in the dining room Barbatos shook his head. “You let her take too many liberties.”

“I find her refreshing.” Diavolo grinned and continued to finish his dinner. “Find Lucifer. I need to talk to him.”

Barbatos’ eyes snapped to the king and stared. “But you just said…”

“I promised nothing. As always, I will unload the weight of this secret on him and he can deal with it.” Diavolo dabbed his mouth with a napkin and sighed with satisfaction. “Thank you. That was delicious.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Yup. Definitely not as much fun.”

Barbatos closed his eyes and prayed for patience.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	4. Through The Cracked Looking-Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They really damaged you didn’t they?” The trapped witch clicked her tongue and something stilled inside me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the reviews. I'm so glad you all are still reading. I'm sorry I didn't get to update during the week. Work got in the way. Weekends are easier to write now.

“Bring him down here, I can take him.”

Sitting on the dark steps in Diavolo’s castle, I took another drag on my cigarette and leaned my head back against the pillar. “Helene for the last time, I am not here to bitch about Asmodeus.”

“Do you even KNOW what he did.”

“Unfortunately you have told me the sordid details despite my protests like a million times. Can I just please smoke in peace?”

The women humphed in annoyance crossing her arms in the portrait that hung on the wall beside me. “You could go smoke in a hundred other corners of this decrepit castle and yet you are here.”

“I am a masochist.” I grinned at her and let out a lung full of smoke. Letting it slide out of my nose like a dragon. Every time it burnt my insides I wanted to quit. The ashes in my mouth wouldn’t go away. But this was the one vice I kept. It reminded me that I didn’t have to be that good little girl. The gangling, tall teenager who always found it hard to be a girl. Now ten years later, I was just as gangling, although the lack of exercise had filled me out in some ways. Age had rounded all those sharp corners. But she still lived there somewhere deep in my chest glaring at me for tainting her with adult cynicism.

“They really damaged you didn’t they?” The trapped witch clicked her tongue and something stilled inside me. But she didn’t notice my distress, perhaps she didn’t care. “It was stupid of you to attach yourself to them. And don’t you dare deny it. I saw the way you trailed after them like a lost little puppy!” A flare of heat sent my fragile emotions into a burst of fire. Her smirk widened when she realized how accurate her aim had been. “Now look at you. Older and still clinging to the delusion that they ever cared about you. The best thing for you to do would be to climb up on that banister and end it all.”

Those words slashed the hardest against my resolve. I might have been able to control the screaming wrath that sang through my veins, but running into Mammon yesterday had left my nerves raw. I didn’t really register I’d actually done something until the witch started screaming.

Head snapping up I realized I’d stood and stuck my half smoked cigarette into the side of her dress.

And while the woman in the portrait wailed, a black angry, smoldering spot grew on her side around her ribs. Horror blossomed in my chest and I hurriedly smothered the burning circle with my fingers. Appalled with my unintentional assault, uncaring of the singe in my fingers, I tried to rubbed away the wound. But like most wounds, it stopped smoldering, but the black scar remained. As did the bruises in the woman’s eyes as she watched me now – with fear.

Swallowing the bile in my throat, I turned and ran.

Up on the higher landing someone took a sharp breath.

*

“That’s not her.”

Diavolo felt his friend fade out of the darkness where they stood a few flights higher in the massive stairwell. “Oh, but it is.”

Lucifer’s distress was near palpable. “What happened to her?”

Diavolo wanted to offer physical comfort but he held himself for now. “You sent her home remember? She grew up.”

A muscle worked in the raven hair man’s jaw as he came to stand beside the banister, eyes on the weeping witch in the portrait. For a flicker of a second the red jewel flashed in his forehead. “Did you expect any different?”

“No.” The King of Hell sighed. “Have you told them?”

“You, of all people, know what would happen if I did.”

“Some things are inevitable.”

Turning his head her met Diavolo’s eyes, hands nearly white on the banister where he braced them. Diavolo could feel the wave of regret that threatened to break his friend. “Why bring her back Diavolo? Why now?”

“Last time you needed her.” It was meant to be a gentle reminder, but Lucifer’s vermilion eyes widened, his mouth parted. So Diavolo gave into the need to soothe his friend and touched his shoulder. “This time she needs you.”

Lucifer was as silent and pensive as a bottle thunderstorm. “Mammon was opposed to bringing a human back.”

“Then perhaps he might need this too.”

The fallen angel closed his eyes, nearly shrinking into himself for a moment. “Diavolo…I…we convinced him this was best.”

“We were clearly wrong. She is tainted with our darkness now. There is no place of her back in the human world. Not anymore.” Diavolo cast one glance back at the portrait as Barbatos silently took it down for repair. But perhaps the witch inside would never be healed. He really needed to put her somewhere nicer but preferably without any traffic around.

“She does not want to stay this time.”

It was true. Storm had been a breath of fresh air the first time she’d come to them. A tall, beautiful Amazonian girl. So like Lilith in many way. So easy to imagine her with angelic wings as she smiled widely and accepted them for whatever sin they were. Becoming family. Bringing them together. Saving themselves from their own vices. Rescuing Belphagor, reminding him that the world was a beautiful place.

This woman who stood in her place was a dark shadow of that laughing child. An armored, bruised, scratched animal ready to bite the first hand that came towards her. To see her so lost now, Diavolo had not been to help himself from retrieving her. “Then we must change her mind.”

Lucifer seemed to contemplate his option before he spoke his truth plainly. “I must tell them. No more secrets.”

It made sense. Diavolo nodded as he stood behind the most beautiful of all angels and demons. “They will make her stay.”

“Hmmmm. Hopefully.”

“And Mammon?”

The eldest of the seven grit his teeth, a wave of pain going through his entire frame. “He is my brother. I will catch him when he breaks.”

“I do not envy you, but I am proud of your resolve. You will always be that Morning Star, Lucifer. Remember that.”

“Thank you.”

“Tea?” Diavolo craned his head and smiled into his unsettled face.

Something seemed to come loose inside Lucifer. Perhaps that he didn’t have to do this alone. His smile was small, but grateful. “Please.”

TO BE CONTINUED...


	5. The Band Aid Theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some band aids come too late.

The days were melding now. I was in a neat little loop. Class. Dinner. Bed. Class, dinner, perhaps an occasional smoke, in my bathroom now, then bed. I had a calendar tacked to my wall. Each day I marked with a smiley face with horns. Every day I struggled to make them curl in ways that didn’t haunt my sleep.

The students had learned to appreciate my quirks. But where I remembered only human facades from my last trip. RAD was much more now. The hallways weren’t as picturesque as I remembered them. What little I saw from the ladies room back to class, I realized the curtains that had been put into place to give me a stress free experience. And I wondered why the hell didn’t Diavolo bother going through the same veil again! Would it have killed him to let me live with my childhood notions one more time?

The students, and it took me a while to see them that way, were really demons. Not in the way the seven of them had been. All boyish and blushing. These kids were monsters. I’d kept myself from being poisoned so far, but there were teeth, an occasional growl of hunger and the ice would skate down my spine while I wrote on the white board. There were spindly fingers around my ankles, but I knew like so many other times I turned around – one would be there.

They were fucking with me.

Well shit; I was also Lilith’s great times ten granddaughter. Not bothering to turn around this time, I lifted my foot and kicked my pretty three inch heel into the invisible thing trying to breathe on me. There was a yelp and I underlined the topic I’d finished discussing. “Out of my class Jintha,” I commanded over my shoulder.

The snake demon girl hissed. The rules were at least obvious. No one defied a teacher’s direct demand. She snatched up her books and disappeared in a sickening wet slither.

Taking a deep breath, I turned around, my stoic mask in place. It had served me in the human world. It would have to do here as well.

The rest of the lesson was thankfully uneventful, until I saw the tall, gangly young demon with burning red eyes sidle up to my teacher’s desk where I was securing papers. I prayed he just wanted to give me another poison apple that I could toss in the trash. If I was on any terms with Lucifer, he would be eating out of my hand. Ahem. No wait. Let’s not go there.

“Ms. Walker may I speak with you?”

Azalis had always been very polite. Also, mostly very silent. In the week or two that I’d been teaching them, he’d barely spoken up in class until I directly called on him. “Sure. How can I help Azalis?”

Shuffling awkwardly on the other side of the desk he poignantly reminded me of another boy who didn’t do so well with social interaction. Especially the non-digital kind. Then heinously, my mind reminded me that that boy had stood there and let Devildom spit me out without a bat of his eye. And after I had confessed like the blithering mess I had been over Mammom constant state of denial.

Shoving the memory away, I gritted my teeth and focused on the young wraith demon. “I had a hard time following your lessen today,” he mumbled timidly before setting off into a predictable little rant. I did my damnedest not to smile. “Could I stay after class today or any day and review it? Or uh... Whatever you think. We could meet in the library or...”

That’s when the first wave of panic hit me. “Not the library.”

Startled at my curt refusal, he blinked owlishly. “Oh uh...”

I could take him to a café…god. Yeah. That would really scream tutoring session – if I was a hooker.

Running a hand down my face, I fought to find a solution that was completely appropriate but for the life of me, everything was a teacher-student scenario that would get me suspended if this were the human world. Mustering the last of my sanity, I offered him a tight smile. “Here is okay. I just…need to make a call and you can...” I wracked my brain, flushing myself when I realized how idiotic I sounded. I was his teacher for god’s sake! “Prepare a few questions,” I advised lamely before scuttling into the corner of the room to tap furiously on my DDD.

Barbatos picked up on the third ring. “Are you done?”

“Come, stand watch!” I hissed with my hand over my mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on! You know I don't stay after class and this kid wants help! Come over before someone else walks in,” I whispered furiously through my blithe smile. Azalis would definitely think I’d lost my mind now.

“Someone like...”

I wanted to reach into the phone and strangle the bastard. “Can you not be a jerk for five minutes?”

“Do you think I have time to play watch dog?”

Taking a deep calming breath, I used my last card. “I will call diavolo.”

But Barbatos did not miss a single beat. “That's lord diavolo to you human.”

Completely incensed now, I resisted the urge to kick something or stomp my feet. I was after all an adult now. “Damn you B! He said so himself! Can you please get off your high horse; I’m panicking here! My therapist says I could bust a nerve!”

And maybe he knew just how precariously I clung to the edge of my sanity. But I could almost feel the roll of his eyes as he snorted. “Ch! Fine.”

Fwip!

Azalis went deathly still. I should have noticed. But I was busy restraining the need to throw my arms around Barbatos as he emerged from a freshly baked door and stood there, arms crossed in silent vigil. Forcing my feet to carry me back to my student, I sat at the desk and opened my lesson plan. “Okay, let's review.”

The tall demon barely asked me anything. He kept glancing around him nervously and I frowned when 20 minutes later, he finally said he got everything and scuttled away with his tail between his legs. The classroom door slammed shut and I turned my gaze to the silent demon in the corner. “Are you scary beyond reason in this new devildom reality that I’m living here?”

“I do work with the King of hell.”

That was not it. I could feel it. Wincing, I gathered my things and came to stand before the door. My mind really was messed up. I’d lived a year amid the seven strongest demons in hell like they were frat boys flocking around me and today I’d called this mysterious demon to my side as if he was a friend. Counted on him to come. And it was baffling because he had. Wasn’t he also the one who’d nearly thrown me to the winged monstrosity off-campus.

“You realize I can’t stand watch all the time.”

Lifting my eyes I looked into the fathomless teal green eyes. “I know.”

“Like band aids remember?” He opened the door and made a very gallant flourish for me to go first. I knew he was mocking me.

“Yeah. I remember B. Will you ever tell me what that thing was behind us?”

Following me through the door he merely flattened his voice in his best butler voice. “We're having deviled duck for dinner Madam.”

Shaking my head, I was smiling. I shouldn’t have found his evasion endearing. But he’d done me good to remind me this wasn’t the place I had visited before. His reality check had reminded me not to get sucked into this place. Because it was beautiful in all his grotesque darkness. Something I was screwed up enough to be able to see. “You're such an ass. Really.”

Barbatos’ smile was the sweetest, most serene I had ever seen. “I am to please.”

It was no wonder Diavolo kept this dangerous creature beside him. Glaring at his retreating back, I held back the growl building in my chest. He wanted band aids. Fine. I could do band aids too.

Whirling around I walked back through the door.

Nobody would ever assume I was a foregone conclusion again.

*

They were seated as they always were. My plate of food was trembling in my hand as the memories assailed me like raining bricks. Each blow made every pain center in my brain sing the fourth Allegro from Mozart’s Pastoral symphony depicting a violent thunderstorm. My therapist would have a cow if she knew what I planned.

Foregoing my happy place, I pulled on the thread inside me that always led to excessively stupid bravery and walked into the dining hall of the House of Lamentation.

It was when I took my usual seat that everything exploded around me.

Lucifer sucked in a sharp breath just as Mammon looked up and his eyes widened. He jerked, scrambling, toppling, nearly decapitating himself as he pushed away from the table. Persian blue eyes nearly the color of firelight, he watched in appalled horror as I sat there primly where I had always sat, my eyes watching him.

The others reacted.

Satan’s soup spoon had stood midway to his mouth and was now dribbling back into the bowl. Beelz had been chewing on an non-descript bone and it fell from both his hand and his mouth. Levi’s moan was nearly painful as Belphagor snapped up to his full sitting height from where he’d practically been drooling into his plate. Poor Asmodeus looked stricken, his hand on his heart, the mismatching nail polish ever present. Ever perfect.

But Mammon? The heat of his furious gaze nearly turned my bones to dust. I cleared my parched throat as I held out my hand, to no one in particular. “Pass the salt?”

This time the very real snarl from the second strongest demon of all the brothers sent my heart plummeting into my stomach as he turned and stormed out of the dining room. But his departure did nothing to calm my nerves.

When the salt shaker smacked into the table beside my plate, I jumped and met Lucifer’s devil-red eyes, the red jewel on his forehead seething. But the eldest of them, he didn’t utter another word. He merely stalked off after Mammon and left us all in silence.

The yelling I was prepared for. The silence…it ate at me. But I couldn’t yet look at them. “Hey.”

Satan’s voice was roughened with restrained emotion. I could feel it rolling of him, but he was perfectly still. “Hey.”

“So I’m back.”

Levi let out another raw moan and I closed my eyes; afraid to look at him.

But when I heard a chair scrape and felt those big, warm arms around wrap around me from behind, everything inside me came crumbling down. All the walls, all the lies, all those empty reassurances. I was brave for all of two seconds before breaking into a thousand little pieces. And if Beelz hadn’t been a demon, he never would have been able to hold on.

When my wail rang through the walls, the chairs screeched and their arms came around my shattering self.

But some band aids come too late.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	6. Old Torment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One moment of solace in a lifetime of regret.

Lucifer had been prepared for a chase. What he found instead was much worse.

Mammon was paused outside in the hallway, his demon flickering under the surface, eyes going from blue to ochre, then back to firelight. Those long thief-thin fingers curled into claws before reforming into fists of restraint.

And it was painfully obvious how hard he was holding himself from rushing back into the dining room. When the human’s cry cut through despite the thick walls, Mammon jerked like he’d been struck. The color seemed to drain from his usually rich skin, a flash of horror skating over his very being.

Lucifer couldn’t watch anymore. He stepped out of the shadows and approached him like one would a wounded, skittish animal.

The Avatar of Greed turned all that confusion into the fine point of fury. “Dammit lucifer! Ya bastard! You knew...”

“I did,” the elder brother nodded, but held his ground. “But only yesterday.”

“Why! Why would ya bring her back!”

He wanted to. It was like an electric current that wanted to propel him forward so he could touch his brother. His usually laughing, smirking, beautifully idiot brother. Of them all, he had never wanted it to be Mammon. As much as he incurred Lucifer’s wrath, Mammon was the glue that held them together. United them. Lucifer had no idea what would hold the Greed Demon now. “I didn't bring her back.”

“Diavolo!?” Laughing maniacally, he paced away, running a sharp taloned hand through the shock of his white hair. “Why he hell would he be this cruel! What more could he want from me!”

Something seemed to crack inside the eldest of the seven deadly sins. No matter the centuries of loss or protection. Every flicker of pain in his siblings still felt like a lance of a double edged blade. “Mammon it will be…”

“No!” Still reeling from the shock, the agitated demon held up a hand, his frame nearly vibrating with restraint. “No. It will never be okay! Ya have to get rid of her!”

After her stunt, Lucifer wanted nothing more. But then he kept seeing the broken little angel wielding a cigarette like a fireball. “Mammon, she needs this.”

“And me! What about me?!” Mammon paced away, a flicker of gold burning a line around him. “What about what I need! I can't... Damn you! She can't be here! Send her back!”

The fabric of reality seemed to bend around Mammon for a moment and Lucifer couldn’t help take a step forward. “Please calm down. You're leaking your power everywhere.”

“I will explode!” Fingers clenched into the white cloudy hair, there was a crazed screech to his voice now. “I can't stand this. I feel... Dammit! Dammit lucifer I can't... She needs to go!”

Lucifer put a hand on the spiraling demon’s shoulder and hissed out a breath. He hadn’t seen Mammon this out of control in centuries. Not even when he had to let her go. Not even after she left. “Be calm brother. I will send her to Diavolo.”

“No! No I.. She's... She's crying. Why the hell does she sound like that?” For a moment it seemed as if Mammon would walk back to gather her in his arms. The need was almost visibly etched across his face. It was in the itch of his claws. But his madness won over his need to go to her as he paced away. “No. I don't care! I DON'T CARE!”

“Mammon, calm down!” His hands were nearly burning, but Lucifer hardened his tone, hoping to get through to his little brother.

“I can't! I will go mad Lucy! I...”

Lucifer reached up his singed hands and held his brother’s face, holding his eyes captive. “Calm. Control. Contain. You remember how we do this Mammon. You know it better than I.”

“Lucy...” The demon trembled like a child he had never been.

“Breathe,” Lucifer whispered. “Say the words.”

“Calm... Control... Contain.” The words were simple. But they had meant a lot to the eldest brother when Mammon had first uttered them to him. For someone burdened with the weight of his decisions, it had seemed pointless, but they had worked. He hoped now, that they would work for Mammon.

And they did. Slowly but surely the Avatar of Greed glowed less gold and seemed to realize just how close to exploding he had been. His eyes flickered with regret when he took in the singed edges of Lucifer’s cuffs. “Shit. Lucifer I...”

“I will fix this.” His older brother vowed. “But I need you contained. Can you do that?”

“Ye... Yeah. I... Can. I'm OK.”

“Good.” Pulling away, Lucifer fisted his bleeding hands. “Then go take a walk. Fly, whatever. I'll fix this by the time you return.”

“Yeah. OK. Just... She's...”

A muscle worked in Lucifer’s jaw. Still thinking of her. He wanted to reach in and take away his brother’s doubt. Devour his pain. But he grit his teeth and hardened his gaze before commanding him. “Go.”

Mammon only hesitated a heartbeat before his demon had taken over and his wings flared to their full wingspan. The wind ruffled Lucifer’s hair as his brother shot off like a bullet. He sighed before looking down at his hands and he let his powers slowly reform the gloves, sealing the flesh underneath, healing whatever he could in the breath before he snapped them closed. Damn this human.

Stalking back to the dining room, he’d already formed the tongue-lashing with grotesque finesse but the opening door made him pause and the sight of Beelz emerging with the unconscious form of the human wrenched a sigh from him.

Satan appeared behind Beelz and eventually the rest of the family framed the doorway, all gazing at Lucifer as if awaiting his agreement.

He wanted to decimate. The singe of his brother’s pain was still raw in his veins, but he closed his eyes and willed the wildfire away. “Find her a room.”

“Preferably a new one,” Satan added.

Opening his eyes, Lucifer let his gaze slide of the nearly lifeless form of the woman curled against the Avatar of Gluttony. Despite her added years, it was not hard to see the pretty young thing she had been as she was curled there in his brother’s arms. “Yeah. New would be best.”

Belphie bit his lip, a finger curling into a strand of her limp brown hair. “What's wrong with her Lucifer?”

Asmodeus’ eyes were haunted. “Will she be OK?”

Lucifer wished he had the answers they sought. But the only one who could answer them now was passed out his Beelz’ arms. “First things first.”

“You knew.”

Satan was as observant as ever and as much as Lucifer wanted to lash out, he knew it was not an accusation. “Last night. I meant to speak to you all, then Mammon. Stupid human. Always so impulsive.”

The Avatar of Wrath sighed. “First things first.” He cocked his head towards the west side of their halls and Beelz followed without a word. The others trailed behind him and Lucifer ground his teeth. One moment and everything goes back to the way it was.

Except for one.

Taking out his DDD, he hit speed dial as he walked towards the door. “Take Mammon for the night,” he spoke without ceremony as soon as the line connected.

Diavolo’s confusion was like a living thing through across their connection. “But storm...”

“Is here.”

“What! How!?”

“I'll explain.” Lucifer let his demon burn through, the wings snapping out. “Find Mammon and take him home. I'll join you shortly.”

“Why would she...”

“I know.” Lucifer growled. “It’s Barbatos and his damned band aids.” He took to the air with fury singing in his wake.

*

Nightmares usually ended the same way. I would wake in cold sweat. My brain would orient itself for a moment then align on one solitary thought: go to him. As if led by invisible strings, I was out of the door past the streak of something pink and towards the one room that always provided solace from the fear.

He had never locked his door. I twisted the knob and flung myself across the darkness, the layout of his chambers memorized. It was when I dove under his covers and found them cold and empty that reality seemed to creep around the periphery of the panic that had propelled me here.

_Oh no._

I remembered the dining hall.

_Oh god._

I remembered their faces.

_Oh dear god._

I remembered his. The appalled horror. Like he’d seen a headless monster that repulsed him.

An arc of pain cut through my chest and I clamped a hand on my sternum, trying to breathe normally. “Shit,” I breathed out with a gasp. I was indeed in Devildom. But the circumstances were not the same. I was not the naïve girl I had been. The world around me had changed.

“Dammit,” With trembling fingers I slid my hand across his sheets to confirm. He was indeed not there. Somewhere in the wild recesses of my mind I recalled that Asmodeus had been the pink blur on the couch. Probably keeping vigil. The bed I crawled out of had not been my own. The hallways had all headed in the wrong direction, but still I found myself here.

My arrival had probably chased him out of his own bed. Couldn’t even stand to be in the same building as me, I ventured.

Mammon wasn’t there to open his arms for me.

The moan that build in my chest sounded suspiciously like Levi’s but I clamped it down. I was a grown woman. I had survived years of therapy and come out smarter, successful and sane. There was no way a mere slip could reduce me to…to….

And for the life of me I couldn’t remember what I was going to say. What I’d become.

Cursing fate and my instinct, I took the small favor that Mammon was not in his bed. Falling back into his pillow, I let the sheet drape over my head as I surrounded myself with the smell of cinnamon and firewood and something sweet like sunshine.

It would be one moment of solace in a lifetime of regret, but for now. It would keep my nightmares at bay and let me sleep.

*

Lucifer started at the shock of white hair peeking out from under the sheet and grit his teeth. “Is this a cruel joke?”

“Hardly,” the King snorted and appeared a tad hurt by his friend’s accusation. “I told him to pick a room. He picked this one.”

Closing his eyes, the eldest of the seven deadly sins took a calming breath. He wanted to reach out and tear his brother out of the torment he had chosen for himself; torment he would wake to, once he remembered he’d found her room and climbed into her bed.

_Oh mammon_ , Lucifer lamented inwardly at the Avatar of Greed. _How deeply painful is all payment._

TO BE CONTINUED...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: "How deeply painful is all payment." Is a Quote by Lord Byron. He wouldn't stop whispering it in my head, so this chapter was born.
> 
> And I know many of you are asking for it to be a little less heart-breaking, but there's a lot these two have to mend before coming together. A lot to repair. Process. This writing is a lot closer to reality than I had anticipated. Mammon and Storm? They have set the pace and I can't rush them. Please bear with me. Thank you for the kudos and the comments. It encourages me to write more everyday.


	7. Greed is a Strange Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To think in my moment of weakness I had sought out my madness again.

The sun never rises in devildom. Not that it ever bothered me before. I hadn’t really realized how odd it was for me to be so comfortable in the darkness until I was spit back into the human world. Everything had been too bright for a time. My parents had thought there was more to my depression than just a need to stay indoors. What the hell was I supposed to tell them? That I fell in love with one of the seven princes of hell and he didn’t want me?

That would have really gone over well with my devout father.

This morning in particular came with an odd calm until I snuggled deeper and the scent of him exploded around me.

Mammon.

Head jerking away, I stared in horror almost dreading the notion that I’d crawled into his bed while he was in it. It was a small consolation when I realized I was indeed hugging the pillow like a sordid lover. But in my weak nightmare riddled brain, I’d come back to his room. That was just as bad.

Mind stuck on a cycle of ‘shit shit shit’ I scrambled away from the bed as if it burned. Brushing myself off as if it still clung to me, suddenly too perturbed to realize I couldn’t shake the smell of him off, I stumbling away.

 _No._ I keened inwardly. _Oh god, the years of therapy down the drain._ All the healing, the fortification gone to hell in one night! The shame of it seemed to take the strength from my limbs as I turned away, catching myself on the arm of the couch.

And then I saw the rest of my teenage sanctuary. In the moonlight that filtered through the window I could see the silver silhouettes of Mammon’s artfully decorated room. A wave of nostalgia passed through me sending gossamer phantoms dancing around the pool table, chasing each other across the couch, lounging in the front seat of his car. Laughing. Teasing…remembering.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to will myself to the field of daisies. To the swing that reminded me of my human childhood. Of my parents. But Mammon kept swirling it away with a flick of his claws.

To think in my moment of weakness I had sought out my madness again. To want to return to the creature who hadn’t felt the need to seek me out. To bother with a mere human.

Gritting my teeth, I glared at the bed that had offered me my first peaceful slumber in years and marched straight for the door. Yanking the door open, I stomped out only to lose my breath.

The said door no longer lead to the hallways of the House of Lamentation.

*

“How could you let her get away!”

Asmo was chasing a nearly frothing Avatar of Wrath as he marched through the hallway. “Don’t you dare accuse me. I stayed awake, knowing full well what lack of sleep can do to my skin. I mean have you LOOKED at my eyebags!”

“Asmodeus! You were supposed to watch her!”

“I did!”

Belphie and Beelz peeked out from their room as their brother barreled past. “What’s going on?” Beelz frowned and fell into step, his twin dragged along by the curious sight. Satan was nearly stomping, his anger rolling off of him in waves, Asmodeus still half asleep as he trailed behind.

“She has disappeared.”

“Asmo!” Belphie admonished and the pretty pink clad demon whined. “You fell asleep!”

“You are hardly in any position to comment, Mr. I can fall asleep on a whim!”

“I think we should focus on finding her, instead of bickering.” Beelz muttered as he took a few strides and took the lead. It was Satan who caught his sleeve as they turned the corner and their entourage came to a screeching halt. Beelz looked down at his suddenly ashen brother and frowned. “What is it?”

Belphie followed Satan’s line of sight to see Mammon’s bedroom door slightly ajar. “Oh no.”

“No!” Asmodeus nearly chewed his nails. “Why would she go in there!”

The Avatar of Gluttony only looked sad. “Nightmares.”

Cursing under his breath, Satan turned and let his demon take form as rushed into the room. “Call Diavolo! Call him now!”

Belphie stood staring at the door and swallowed hard. “She’s in the Court of Greed.”

*

Nothing made sense.

I’d hoped to get away from the familiarity of his world only to be thrust into a waking nightmare. But the world beyond the door was nothing I could have ever imagined. Not even in my worst dreams. The House of Lamentation had disappeared. On the other side of the door, I had appeared on what seemed to be a floating dais nearly made entirely of glass. I stared down in horror, my stomach in my throat.

Beneath me, roiling, flowing and deafening was an endless, angry sea of Grimm.

The heat and glare of the place was astounding. Squinting with my arm up, I tentatively took in the landscape. If it could ever be called that. More glass platform floated on different levels above the golden ocean underneath. Nothing seemed to connect one from the other. A single solitary door opened out of nowhere from which people appeared; all races, colors, ages.

One thing was common though: the stream of wide-eyed fear.

The doors seemed to allow a new person on every platform every now and then, some teetering too close to the edge. To my horror I saw some fall, some jump and some pushed crying and screaming into the unrelenting waves of money that undulated beneath. The sea of Grimm seemed to roar on forever. There was no end to it.

And the screaming wouldn’t stop. Some in horror, some in absolution. Some in the agony of realization.

The terrible reality of just where I was hit me hard enough to send me to my knees.

This was the world of the Avatar of Greed. This part of the realm was his domain. The flipside of just what the high demon did in his spare time.

“You’re not on my schedule human.”

Head snapping up I saw a black swirl of smoke that only showed burning gold eyes and a wide cheeky mouth full of shark teeth. If I hadn’t caught the distinct twirl of the thing’s horns, I never would have realized what I saw. Where I remembered D. No 2 as a cute dancing, little, hat-wearing shadow, this creature was all teeth and burning eyes. And much bigger. But there was no mistaking the golden horns that made him a servant of Greed. Beautiful flat ribbons of bone that curled up into sharp cutting points.

Mammon’s horns.

“Are you deaf?”

“I wouldn’t be on your schedule because I’m not supposed to be here.” It was a miracle my voice didn’t crack as I rose to my feet. “So I’ll just be on my wa_”

The door I’d come from vanished with a little pop and I felt dread pool into my belly as the creature drifted closer. “You misunderstand human,” the thing gurgled viciously, causing the fine hair on my neck to stand. “Unscheduled arrivals all go to the boss for evaluation.”

Turning slowly, I swallowed hard. “Let me guess. Flashy, blue-eyed, about yay tall?” I held up my hand above my head and the thing was nearly in my face. “The Great Mammon, I presume?” I squeaked quickly as Smokey become a flare of angry gold fire.

It contemplated eating me for a moment before deflating back to its black shadowy self. “Respect. Good. This way,” it hissed and motioned with a black, crooked tendril. As it floated to the edge of the dais, a flicker of a partial staircase appeared.

The intangible stairs turned my knees to jelly, but I had no other choice. Letting out a slow, shaky breath, I put my bare foot on the first step and willed my heart to calm. The sooner I found ‘The Boss’ the faster I could get back to some semblance of sanity. Fresh screams erupted around me and to my horror I saw a few bodies streak past me from a dais above before crashing into a wave of screaming Grimm. “Oh my god.”

“Wrong realm human. He can’t hear you from here.”

TO BE CONTINUED...


	8. Things Go Astray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mammon finally gets the answers he wanted.

Lucifer watched the firelight set fire to his brother’s white hair. The Avatar of Green stood silently in front of the fireplace, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. His ever present brown leather jacket and sunglasses in place. “Mammon?”

His brother didn’t even turn around, merely spoke wearily. “What would ya like me to say Lucifer?”

With a sigh, Lucifer leaned forward in his chair. “Stop blaming yourself. We all did what we thought was best.”

“And then it wasn’t!” Mammon snapped around in a flicker of his power, those blue eyes nearly gold with his demon. “Have ya heard the way she cries! Like the world has split open and she’s bleedin’ all over its ashes!”

“Damn, that’s poetic,” Diavolo murmured from where he sat sipping tea.

“Diavolo.” Lucifer’s tone and frown were admonishing.

“No please. Laugh at the ironic joke that is me.” Hands still in his jeans, the lanky demon began to pace.

“None of us could have predicted this,” Lucifer kept his voice soft so as to placate his brother. Who was marginally calm now that the shock of her appearance had worn off.

“ _He_ could have.” Mammon jabbed an accusatory finger in Barbatos direction.

The usually calm demon bristled. “I never said it was the perfect solution. I see options. I see possibilities. Humans still have freewill. Things go astray.”

“So what the hell went astray for her?”

“You did,” Barbatos threw back at Mammon but there was no bite to his revelation. Just fact.

Diavolo nearly spit out his tea. “Barbatos!”

Mammon stared, his mouth parting slowly.

The demon butler smiled sweetly at his master. “Apologies my Lord. Should I sugar coat the truth? The human fell for the High Demon of Greed and you _handled_ her.”

This time it was Lucifer that bristled, rising out of his chair. “That is not what we did! We wanted her to be happy! To have some semblance of a normal life!”

“Then you should have left her the well alone!”

Diavolo groaned and set his cup down. “ENOUGH!” The room fell silent. Running a tired hand through his hair, The King of Hell looked at Barbatos. “She was a child. We thought it a mere infatuation.”

Mammon hadn’t said a word and Barbatos honed in on it like a shark, his teal eyes fixed on the Avatar of Greed. “It wasn’t infatuation.”

A muscle worked in his jaw but when Mammon spoke, his voice wavered. “Ya said she’d thrive. She’d have a…a family. A child. A future. This is…she is…wrong.” He lifted anguished eyes to Barbatos. “What went so wrong?”

Diavolo spoke before Barbatos could offer another acerbic truth to the already distraught demon. “Most humans who come and go don’t have the connections she made here. Most humans who come to us have stronger, deeper ties with their own world. Their families. Their lives.”

Lucifer was thoughtful. “She was Lilith’s descendent.”

“And once she realized that, she was inadvertently tied to you,” Barbatos explained. “Severing the pacts did not sever the connections. Diavolo and I had been monitoring her progress. In the beginning we just thought she missed you all. Then she began to show signs of unrest. But resilient as she was, her life did fall on the track we predicted. Then we noticed a new pattern. Despite her friends, her lovers,” Mammon flinched, but Barbatos continued, “she never formed deeper ties with her own kind. As if the void left behind could never be refilled. Perhaps she would have eventually found a way to go on with her human life. Have the future you all wanted for her.”

Mammon spoke before anyone else could. “But?”

“Did _you_ forget her?”

“Barbatos!”

Lucifer frowned at Diavolo’s reprimand. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“Barbatos enough!”

“No!” The growl across the study drew everyone’s attention as the air around the Avatar of Greed began to heat. Those pretty blue eyes had gone a low burnt sienna. Like hellfire. “Tell me.”

And Barbatos hesitated.

That hesitation was enough and Mammon caught fire as his demon exploded out of his skin. He was across the room in a second, slamming Barbatos against a thick marble pillar, his claws nearly curling over the entire girth of his throat. “TELL ME!” He demanded.

“Mammon!” Lucifer was out of the chair in a second but Barbatos spoke before he could do anything.

“You did not forget her Mammon.” The Demon Butler looked directly into those fiery blue and sunrise eyes, unafraid. “You never stopped loving her. It was your connection with her, that never let her move on.”

Jerking away as if burned, Mammon stumbled back, the gold glow fading from his skin. “Wha…no. Ya said if I let her go…ya said it would be enough!”

“We were wrong.” The King of Hell admitted with a sigh.

The High Demon of Greed let out a keen of pain. “All this time. She’s felt…and I’ve been thinkin’ she was happy.” He turned to Diavolo. “How could ya do this to her! Why didn’t ya bring her back sooner! Why didn’t ya tell _me_!?”

“Then all of this would have been for naught. We gave her the chance she needed,” Diavolo looked genuinely confounded. “But she didn’t take it.”

“And now she thinks I abandoned her!”

Lucifer touched his brother’s shoulder gently. “Not just you.”

“Oh fuck yeah, that’s SO much better!” Mammon ran a hand through his hair, eyes wild, as he paced away. His mind was already going off in tangents. Nothing he tried, made much sense to him. “What now?”

“We must see if she can adapt,” Diavolo stroked his chin. “I implemented this Teacher exchange program to see just that.”

“You mean conduct another social experiment,” Mammon scoffed.

“Mammon…” Lucifer’s voice was warning.

“No. I’m done playing to your whims brother.”

There was a creak and everyone paused as Satan strode unceremoniously into the room. “We have a problem.”

“Not now Satan,” Mammon tried to dismiss him, but his next words sucked the breath from his lungs.

“Storm is in the Court of Greed.”

The Avatar of Greed stilled. “What? Since when?”

“Some time last night. Asmo was watching her but he fell asleep.”

A wave of something unnamed went through Mammon’s frame as he turned to his eldest brother and his King. “Ya had your chance to give her simple.” Those leathery thing wings snapped open. “My turn.”

“What will you do?” Diavolo was suddenly weary and his suspicions were not unfounded.

Mammon’s pretty face widened into a hard, vile leer. “Complicate the hell outa her.”

Lucifer’s eyes widened when he realized what his brother had planned. “Mammon, wait!”

But the Avatar of Greed had already disappeared.

“Damn!” Diavolo cursed uncharacteristically as Lucifer glared at Barbatos. The Demon Butler merely smiled serenely.

“Ahem.” Satan cleared his throat as she raised an eyebrow. “So I’ve a short fuse and a question.”

*

Slivers of ice slipping down my spine, I grit my teeth and followed the Smokey creature through the labyrinth of Mammon’s domain. I was once again reminded of just how little I had actually seen on my first trip here. How could I have been so naive?

This was hell in its most hideous form.

Looking behind me, I knew what I would see, but I watched with grotesque fascination as the stairs disappeared. No way back. How easy it would be to lose my step, to not find my next. And the screeching of coin on coin was constant like a storm. Even with that din, the screams of the living were louder.

“Pause.”

He spoke before my mind caught up to the command. Although, my feet screeched to a halt, my hand went straight through his Smokey back. It was probably an instant, like touching a hot pan by mistake. But in that instant I felt a lifetime. The spike of my heart was only second to the teeth-grinding hunger and want that wracked every cell in my body. The need to have more of everything leaked from every pore of my skin until I wanted to claw myself out. And perhaps Smokey hadn’t meant for me to touch him, but I saw the wide-toothed leer as he swirled around and circled me once before floating beside my ear, his foul breath shocking my system back to sanity. “Again.”

“N..no thanks!” Gasping, my heart nearly in my throat, head pounding, I dragged in lungful of breaths like a drowning woman. And it took every ounce of my control not to lose my footing as I stood on the last step to the Court Proper. One more glassy rise and the platform rose up into endless pillars of gold that extended up into darkness. If staring into an endless drop below was disconcerting, the nothingness above pressed down almost oppressively.

How did Mammon rule this!?

“Pity. Coming?”

Swallowing down the nausea of the greed that had swept through my system, I took a shaky step onto the large dais. There were a few people draped, hiding, prostrate around the golden pillars. Perhaps waiting for judgement. Fulfillment. Repayment. But the only thing that drew the eye was the high-back, gilded throne strewn with blue velvet cushion that could only be the color of Mammon’s eyes.

_Of all the self-important, arrogant, narcissistic…_

I wanted to roll my eyes, but I was still shaking and Smokey was still watching me with hungry eyes. Like he’d had a taste and wanted more. Clamping my mouth shut, I walked forward and stood there gathering what was left of my courage. “So where’s your Boss, I do have to wash my hair today.”

“Here.”

Head snapping around, I felt the glass floor quake beneath my feet, but all I could do was watch the Avatar of Greed striding across the Court, his eyes like liquid lightning, brow dark and wings unfurled in irate fury.

And all I could think was: _Oh crap._


	9. If I Could Turn Back Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I could face my nightmares, my demons, my shortcomings, but there was no way to survive his apology.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for sticking with this. Sorry it took me so long to finish this. But I was really struggling with doing justice to their reunion. 
> 
> It's long and I thought of posting it in two parts, but then I couldn't do that to my readers. So apologies for the length.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did writing this whole thing. Love to all my readers and reviewers!

There were very few opportunities during my last visit to Devildom to see Mammon in his demon form. And even though I remembered the usual flash and glam of his black and gold ensemble, there was no way to prepare for the full effect.

Especially now, when he was slightly pissed off, stalking and larger than I remembered him. Which was crazy! He was immortal, he didn’t get older. Did he?

Despite the roar of Grimm, I could hear the clear ‘clink’ of those gold spikes that hung from the high collar of his cropped and studded leather jacket. And there was no way to overlook the white tattooed expanse of his exposed chest and torso. The rich undertones of his skin nearly honey-glazed now. The crisscrossed strap of the leather belts covered nothing important and only drew attention to the very low slung pants patterned with gold-lined white diamonds along one leg and a long strip of studs down the other. Even the gold studs on his mid-length black leather boots were polished to perfection.

But it was still the horns that took my breath away. Ever since I’d seen them for the first time, I wanted to reach my finger into the ornate swirl of the flat, black, lustrous bone. They twirled up almost like a lock of hair wrapped around a finger. Begging to be touched. As a teenager, I had never had the courage to ask him. Even if my fingers remembered the silk of his cloud-white hair, I couldn’t help the rough swallow as those horns flickered in the gold light of his court.

And those wings! I remembered them smaller, vestigial and bat-like. Now they were stretched open, wide, and spiked like a dragon’s. For an instant I recalled the flap of wings and the pressure of their dispersed air when Barbatos had taken me into the outer realms. So there was genuine fear there when he stood not a hair’s breadth away from me.

I didn’t realize I’d retreated until the back of my thighs pressed into the seat of his throne, my eyes wide as I caught my weight against one arm before I could fell into it.

For a second The Avatar of Greed just stood there leaning over me, his Persian blue eyes nearly gold as they bore into mine, his nostrils flaring with my scent. “Hmmm. It is you.” Wrinkling his nose he pulled away to hook his thumbs into the belt of his pants, those eyes apathetic. “Gotta hand it to you human, you’ve got some nerve.”

My mouth opened and closed for a moment. Considering this was almost the first time I was facing off my demon, I couldn’t help the flicker of that old familiarity or the sheer panic that took my composure. Pulling on the only emotion strong enough to deal with the shock of seeing him, I glared at him with anger. “I walked out through your bedroom door! There was no plan to end up in your greed induced nightmare.”

A snow-white eyebrow arched, amusement coloring his apathetic face. “And ya shoulda been rewarded for yer trespassing?”

“My…what!” I sputtered completely thrown for a loop. I had expected apologies, maybe even groveling, but this confident demon was not the fumbling, lackadaisical boy I’d tussled with before. “I did NOT trespass!”

“Didja sleepwalk?”

“NO!” I wanted to stomp my foot, but tantrums were his thing. To think he could still color me this way was maddening.

“Invading my privacy then.”

“I did NOT mean to end up in your bed!”

I had only belatedly realized my words, but the way Mammon’s mouth widened into a smirk and Smokey’s mocking snicker lit a low fire to my anger. Narrowing my eyes, my mouth pinched, I crossed my arms. “Don’t be an asshole please.”

“But I’m so good at it.” His gaze swept over me like a caress and my skin caught fire.

The leer on his face did all sorts of crazy things to my insides so I didn’t chose my next words very carefully. “Wow. Scummy second born has found his spine.”

“Name calling,” he clucked his tongue and where I’d expected him to prickle or fluster, all he seemed was disappointed. “I thought you’d be above all that.”

Admonished, I felt the heat flare across the bridge of my nose. “I’m…” The words lodged in my throat and I touched my temple anxiously. I was losing control of this conversation and with Mammon that was dangerous. I took a deep breath. “I apologize. Lashing out at you isn’t what I practiced.”

Just like that, the finely sculpted mouth widened into a boyish grin, his stoic façade falling like a veil. “You practiced meeting me?”

I did not want to think he was cute, so I cut him down before he misconstrued my meaning. “Don’t romanticize it. It was therapy.”

“Did it work?”

I swallowed hard at his quick quip. Damn him, he wasn’t taking the bait with anything I threw at him. My instincts told me this was his domain. It was all kind of idiotic to try and shake him. A wave of defensiveness went through me as I tried to hold his gaze. “Did what work?”

“Therapy?” He grinned before winking at me. “Preparin’ to face The Great Mammon.”

And it would be so easy to fall into old patterns with him. But my heart was still an aching lump in my chest. “Nothing can prepare me for you.”

Mammon narrowed those lightning eyes at me. “Makin’ fun of me human?”

“Can I eat her master?”

Mammon hummed for a moment, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Lemme think about it.”

Smokey drifted closer to me his mouth open around his shark teeth and the reality of the situation suddenly seized me again.

“Wait, what!? Heh. He’s kidding.” Forcing out a strangled little laugh, I peeked at Smokey’s unhinged, toothy grin and unconsciously stepped closer to Mammon. Lifting weary eyes to the Avatar of Greed, I spoke with a touch of panic. “You’re kidding, right?”

The imperious demon smirked down his nose at me. “Don’t know. Ya do smell delicious.”

And he’d said that to me before. Once when it made my teenaged heart flutter like butterfly wings. This close to him, those beautiful blue eyes almost flirting and teasing, I felt a streak of the old want run through me. But the heady power of it was enough to jerk me back to reality. Rubbing at the stabbing pain where my heart was, I took a step away from him, suddenly unsure how to play this game with him. The banter was becoming easier and my breath was becoming harder to draw. I went from sixteen to thirty six in a space of a heartbeat and it hurt like hell.

I felt more than saw the softness of his gaze as he lifted a hand towards me before thinking better of it. And it was just as well. I couldn’t handle him touching me. Not anymore. “I wish I could take the last twenty years back Storm.”

_Oh dear god, no._ I did not want to have THIS conversation with him. I could handle the banter, the back and forth. I did not want to deal with this. I could face my nightmares, my demons, my shortcomings, but there was no way to survive his apology. “Yeah, no. That is not how my coping mechanisms work,” I stuttered a spasmodic wringing to my hands as I looked away from him. “We’re going to pretend you didn’t cut me off. In fact, one of my favorite scenarios is imagining you fell into Diavolo’s dungeon and Henry swallowed you whole and your DDD was outside so you couldn’t call for help or me for your dying confessional.” I was ranting. I knew and he knew it. And the worst part was that I couldn’t stop and he looked at me with such tenderness that I wanted to stab him. “I have several more. Most of them around your demise because I figured that would be the only thing that…that…” My tirade trailed off into a choked little whispers as Mammon stepped up to me, his entire self only inches away. “Um…what are you doing?” I squeaked.

“As much as it pains me to admit this human. You and I, we need to talk. Somewhere without the theme of eternal damnation playin’ in the background.”

Swallowing , I dug deep into my resolve to keep from jumping away from him. He was still too close and the damned throne was still digging into the back of my thighs. “Sorry but that ship as sailed Greedy pants. Now uh…” I tried to duck around him or step away as I cleared my throat. “So if you’ll just…ahem. Excuse me…”

And the Greedy demon slid the tip of his nose against my cheekbone and sent lightning skating into my veins. “Tell me what ya want?”

Now my panic had exploded into a full on anxiety attack. Hand once again back on the arm of his throne to keep me from tumbling into it like a sordid heroine, I missed the way his eyes flickered with longing or the way his voice husked. “Home,” I grumbled brokenly. “I just wana go home, okay? Will you…” I grunted when there was no room to get out from under him again. “Can you…”

“Yeah. To all those questions,” he breathed into my ear and I stilled under him.

Dreading the explanation I lifted my gaze to his. “What questions?”

“Will I put my hands on ya? Yeah.” My breath hitched. “Can I show ya how good we can be together?” My knees weakened. “Oh yeah. On both accounts.”

I couldn’t smother the shudder as it quaked through my entire frame, my mouth parted, eyes probably blown wide. “Don’t you dare,” I whispered desperately.

Perhaps he took pity on me. Perhaps he wanted to rally his own thoughts. But when he pulled away a few inches it was worse. Because now those eyes were fixed on my gaping mouth. “Tell me Storm. Tell me what the Avatar of Greed can grant you so I can get ya out of here.”

“Why are you doing this?” I hated how it was almost a cry of pain. Of pleading. And I’d been right. No amount of therapy could have prepared me for the all-consuming demand of this demon.

And just like that, something seemed to come lose inside him and I saw his hands nearly claw before curling into tight fists. As if he was bracing himself against what I was feeling. Like he could feel it without even touching me. “I shoulda done this a long time ago.”

“Talk about insult to injury.” I grit my teeth against the onslaught of what his regret could do to me and shook my head. “Twenty years too late,” I scoffed, almost to myself.

“I was an idiot.”

“Shocking.” I glared up at him. It wasn’t much of an apology and the heat of how late it came almost made me put my hands on him and push him away. But damn; his skin was bare and there was no way in hell I would give him the satisfaction. “Can you please get out of my personal bubble?”

“I often fell asleep with my arms around ya when you had your nightmares, remember? Ya didn’t mind then.”

I scowled, aptly reminded of just how sweet he could been. “You hadn’t cut out my heart with a blunt knife at the time.”

He stilled almost as if I had driven the same knife into his chest. “Stormy.”

“Don’t call me that!” This time my snarl was clear warning. I did not want to go back there. To those memories or that time. Never again.

For the first time since he’d walked into the court, Mammon looked unsure of what to say. So when he uttered the next words, his aim threw stars before my eyes. “What happened to the boy you were goin’ to marry?”

And just like that I was gutted again. “Don’t.”

“I’m curious.”

There was a touch of cruel intention to his insistence. I wanted to hate him! My mouth, dry my breathing erratic, I did not want to beg. “Stop.” It was a plea none the less.

“You were supposed to have the kids. The picket fence. The mortgage.”

Heinous monster! My fury lit like a match. “Mammon shut up!”

But he wasn’t cruel, his curiosity was completely genuine. “Why wouldja give all that up?”

“Because I’m also an idiot!” I snapped at him. Lashed out but the dichotomous demon seemed to melt at my words. But then his hands lifted without warning and held my cheeks almost reverently. His own fingers trembled. “Oh god stop!” Now openly begging, I caught his wrists. “Don’t do this…”

“To my utter ruin,” he murmured, his forehead nearly touching mine, eyes slanted shut. “I saw it. How your life could be complete. I hoped for it. It was all that made it bearable.” Everything stilled inside me as I stared up at him. My mind was suddenly chaos, thoughts flying in a torrent of dismay as he continued to speak achingly. Explaining the horror of his truth. “How could I not want that for you?”

Breath sucked from my lungs, I gaped up into those luminous blue eyes, glittering with something sweet like love. “No,” I whispered brokenly only to see his eyes bleed regret. My worst nightmare was a reality. “No!” I jerked away from him, tumbling, climbing over the side of the throne to finally escape him. “The pact. The others… _you_ told them?”

“Barbatos did.” Fists clenched he looked prepared for my fury. Brave in the face of however I reacted.

“Barbatos!?” I wanted to find a door, go through it and throttle that arrogant, know-it-all asshole! “Are you fucking kidding me!? I left here with a broken heart because you didn’t have the courage to tell me you wanted me to stay, because of what _Barbatos_ said I should have!?” I screamed, a part of me begging to stop. That is wasn’t really Mammon’s fault. He’d already admitted he only wanted my happiness. That he had wanted me to have something normal. Even if it wasn’t him. But I was angry. Angry that he hadn’t wanted me bad enough to damn it all to hell! This demon who was the epitome of all greed had been a selfless sap! And for what!? I had been happy with what he could offer me. I would have died happy if he’d merely told me he didn’t want me to go. The idea that he’d let me go for my own good was too extraordinary for me to wrap my brain around.

Mammon sighed, the confident strutting demon dissolving into an old weary creature as he ran a hand through his messy hair. “I didn’t know.”

“What Mammon?” I stepped up to him, my anger fantastically out of control now. “What did you not know!?”

“That ya wouldn’t goddamn live your life!” He finally snapped. Those eyes like liquid sapphire as he bore down on me again. “You were sixteen! I was 5000 years old! Damn you Storm, did ya REALLY think I wouldn’t want ya to have an actual life?”

“This is crazy.” Laughing through my tears now, I shook my head. “You let me go because you wanted me to forget everything. Forget you and be _normal_?”

“Why didn’t you marry him!?” He thundered now well and truly demonic as his wings snapped open, a stir of lightning around his very being.

“Because I’m still in love with you!” And I might as well have slapped him. “I couldn’t DO that to him, okay?”

Mammon seemed to shrink into himself. All remnants of anger leaving him in heartbeat as he tried to reach me, his fingers almost brushing my wrist. “Storm…”

But I was beyond consoling. “No.” Evading his grasp, I shook my head. “It’s too late.”

The Avatar of Greed huffed and his brow darkened, irritated with my ability to jump out of his reach again. “Let me change yer mind.”

“Enough! You’ve had your fun. There’s no need to mock the silly human girl anymore! I am NOT her!”

Mammon took a breath, his tongue scratching a fang as he contemplated my upheaval. Then his focus sharpened. “You wana go home?”

“YES!”

I should have anticipated it. His calm was back. The reins were being snatched from me before I could wrestle them back. “Fine then,” he growled, low and warning. “Yer not a child anymore. You know how this works. Here in my Court, ya offer me something and I grant ya bounties beyond yer human comprehension. The door ya came from only goes one way. The only way out, is to make the deal with _me_.”

The blood drained from my skin. “You want to make a pact with me!?” He wasn’t serious. He couldn’t think I would agree. Or that it would fix anything.

“Oh, it’s much more than that.”

The demon had finally lost his mind. “No.”

“Let me make this right Storm.”

“No!”

“If ya don’t speak what you greed for babe, I will seduce you into these here cushions and you will forget everything,” he clarified with clinical precision, one white-painted nail pointing to the pool of velvety cushions around his throne.

Oh god. I stared at the cushions with idiotic preoccupation. It was too much. The pictures he painted in my head nearly blinding me to the very clear threat.

“Shall I prepare the ritual Master?” Smokey chuckled.

“Ritual?” Head snapping up my gaze swiveled between them for a second. “What ritual!?”

Mammon’s leer was positively lecherous as he started to walk up to me, his demon wings settling happily against his back as he rolled his shoulders. “Oh yeah. The full works for this one.”

Holding up a hand, I trembled. A sick, exciting little fire lit in my belly. It was grotesque and wrong and all kinds of messed up. With this conversation. This situation. It really was hell down here. “Don’t you dare!” I nearly stumbled as the court faded to show a flare of Mammon’s seal all around me, a blue fire igniting around the High Demon of Greed. The screams of the damned melted away, the din of the sea of Grimm faded. “Oh my god!” I stared around me realizing what he was doing. What making a pact with a demon actually looked like. “I know karate now! Mammon, you stop right there!”

“You got the candy coated version of the Avatar of Greed before human. Time to make ya sing for me.” Mammon’s fangs flashed he drew closer.

“No deal. NO deal!”

But he wasn’t listening as he stalked closer, a hint of the tiger he could have been with Luke’s potion; not the fairytale, ear-spouting version I’d lived through. “Let’s get ya out of this human skin. It’s covered in lies and deceit. But your soul. That’s what yer wagerin’. That’s what I want now.”

I turned and ran. But I’d barely taken two steps before he was right there and I collided with him. His arms caught me, my hands connected with his skin and my world exploded into light. “Oh god,” I muttered in prayer because ever cell in my human body had liquid lightning singing through it and into the next. I knew it even before the tendrils of his power planted the first seeds of unadulterated greed into my very spirit. All I could feel was want. Demand. And with him wrapped around me – desire.

And I was pissed as hell as my fingers slid over the heat of him. “I’ve only ever wanted you. I want you now.” My voice pitched low. “I want _more_ of you now.” Breath halting, my eyes widened as unbidden words tumbled out of me. “You conniving, pushy, scheming…hot, sexy…dammit Mammon! Get out of my head!”

“That’s not me!” The splash of peach across his cheeks was real as my innermost thoughts came barreling through me. Laughing, he gathered me close. Holding me like I would break. Like I meant more to him than anything else in the world. “It’s all you babe,” he purred against my temple, sliding one hand around my jaw, his eyes drinking me in. Hungry and possessive. “And ya have me human. Always have. Even when I didn’t have you. I pinned for ya.”

The shivers set low and heated inside me as everywhere he touched seemed to light up like a Christmas tree. “Oh yeah.” I muttered acerbically. “You look destroyed.”

Mammon rolled his eyes. “Didja expect a broken, bleedin’, shell of a man because I sent my one true love to go live her life? Come _on_ human! Even you don’t believe in that drivel!”

There was a whimsical, soft part of me that was suddenly elated by the casually thrown in ‘love’, but the harder, hurt part of me was still petulant. “But you never came for me!” I could palpably feel how much this demon cared for me. How did he bring himself to let me go? It was unthinkable.

He sighed with regret. “I wanted to do the right thing dammit.” His nose nuzzled against mine and all the fire and fury melted into tenderness. Damn but this demon would be the death of me. “They all said I should do the right thing,” he murmured helplessly.

I gave into the need to touch him, my fingers sliding up the length of his throat to trace his ears before plunging into his hair. A sigh of absolution left me nearly limp against him. It made no sense how two decades of heartache could be erased with just a touch. “How’s the honor coming now?”

Purring to my touch, his head moving in tandem with my fingers, he grinned wickedly. “Honor be damned, I’ve wasted enough time denyin’ how much I greed for ya. Time to earn my forgiveness.”

The bruised broken little girl wanted to tell him to go to hell. But there was an elation suffusing through me that made every cell in my body bright and beautiful. It was illogical that a demon of his bearing could make me this happy. The bruised girl cursed the distance he’d imposed on us before disappearing into a puff of pure want. “I greed for you too.”

There was a flare of heat over my heart and I didn’t need to look. His seal was back on my skin because as his mouth widened into a beautiful big smile, the Court of Greed began to fade. I blinked into the sudden darkness of his room back in the House of Lamentation, stumbling against him for a second. He gathered me closer, his mouth coming to skim against the shell of my ear. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear ya say that.”

“I do.” I sighed, my eyes shuttering close as a steady streak of sensation flared everywhere he touched. “I remember every moment of the last twenty years.”

“Time is relative for a demon.” Thin, rough fingers tucked my bangs behind one ear as he cradled my jaw. “Felt like forever.” He let out a husky chuckle against my temple and I couldn’t help the besotted little smile. For a moment it was too surreal. If he wasn’t under my hands, If I hadn’t been running my fingers up his sides, feeling the tremble in his frame, I’d think I was dreaming. But this hard, bad ass demon with his soft melting center was taking me back to when I was young. When it had been simple. Just first smiles, first touches. The first of everything.

And even after all those years I recounted, all the love struck yearning, all the wasted time, I wasn’t prepared. Because when he tilted his head and pressed his mouth against mine, the veil around my world shattered. Nothing else remained except his hand cupping the side of my face, fingers under my ear, thumb stroking along my cheek and his lips pressed to mine. For all his bluster and growling, Mammon had always been sweet. Now it was in his kisses as he pulled away, tilted his head the other way and kissed me deeper.

Unable to help myself, I slid one hand up his spine, felt him pressed harder against me, felt the tips of my fingers graze the deceptively thin bones of his wings. They trembled before the demon came alive around me. Mouth snapping away from mine with a hiss of restraint, like I’d burned him, Mammon let me see the otherworldliness in his eyes. It was a moment, but I froze there for a second. “Perhaps we should go slow,” there was an odd darkness to his voice, but it faded with each word.

“There’s a lot to forgive. If we go any slower, it could literally take forever.” I was only half joking, but at least his hands were back to stroking my cheek, those eyes their usual Persian blue again.

“Bring it,” he continued with a deep rumble in that sexy chest. “A demon’s stamina has no end.”

_What!?_ He could mean… _like none?_

Almost as if he could read my thoughts, he crowded me back and if I didn’t have his room memorized, hitting the bed would have been a shock. “Storm Walker, tell me you love me one more time.”

“And feed your already inflated ego? Pffft! No.” I snorted as if I was all unflappable and not turning into a human puddle of want. Then I blinked. “Wait. Didn’t you put a whammy on me?”

“I used my powers to lower all those walls of denial so you’d stop pretendin’ this isn’t what you and I both want. Didja really think I was going to compel you to do anything against your will?” My demon snorted splaying himself against every inch of me and smirked. “I am The Great Mammon. Women just fall into my arms like flies.”

“Mammon?”

“Yeah babe?”

Caught between idiotic hilarity and tears, I tightened my hold on him possessively. “If you would kindly remove that foot from your mouth, I can put my tongue there.”

His snicker was so poignantly familiar as he slid between my thighs, those wings curtaining us like a blanket, all soft and leathery. “Damn human, I love this older you.”

And finally I wound my fingers into the curl of those obsidian horns, tracing the curves, memorizing the texture and indulging all my fetishes. “I love you too. Now shut up and earn that forgiveness you promised.”

The demon moaned a low, husky, needy sound and kissed me silent.

_I didn't really mean to hurt you  
_ _I didn't wanna see you go  
_ _I know I made you cry, but baby_

_If I could turn back time  
_ _If I could find a way  
_ _I'd take back those words that've hurt you  
_ _And you'd stay  
_ _If I could reach the stars  
_ _I'd give them all to you_  
_Then you'd love me, love me  
_ _Like you used to do_

_Excerpt from “If I Could Turn Back Time” By Cher_

THE END


End file.
